Wireless Internet from balloons? It's not that great a leap from existing tech.

Google is reportedly developing wireless networks for sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia that would combine a technology well established for such purposes (TV White Spaces) with one that's a bit more exotic—balloons that transmit wireless signals.

The Wall Street Journalbroke the story, reporting "the Internet search giant has worked on making special balloons or blimps, known as high-altitude platforms, to transmit signals to an area of hundreds of square miles." As we noted a week ago, Google reportedly "wants to connect people outside of major cities in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia through a combination of frequencies used for television broadcasting, special balloons or blimps transmitting on non-TV broadcast frequencies, and potentially through satellite transmissions."

Google itself is already delivering wireless Internet access to South Africa and other areas with TV White Spaces technology, so it makes sense to expand that effort. Satellite Internet is another technology well-suited to serve rural areas without strong wired Internet connections (despite latency problems).

So what about balloons? Is that for real or just another rumor based on unnamed sources that will never see the light of day? Google declined to say anything, noting to Ars that "we don't comment on rumor or speculation."

Speculation can be fun, though. Let's assume the Journal report is correct and try to figure out whether the scant details we have make any sense. Wireless consultant and engineer Steven Crowley told Ars that using balloons to distribute wireless Internet is certainly a possibility.

In fact, balloons are already used for various types of wireless communication. Some two decades ago, Crowley consulted for the US government, which was using balloon-based technology to transmit anti-Castro propaganda to Cuba through a US government-financed TV station called TV Marti.

After considering options such as flying an aircraft back and forth over the water or transmitting from a barge in international waters, the station went with an aerostat, a balloon tethered to the ground by a 10,000-foot cable, Crowley said.

"They'd feed up video and power on this cable and transmit to Cuba when the weather was good, which was most of the time," Crowley said. "At times they had to bring it down when weather was bad. I think that's true with all these systems. If you have inclement weather, depending on the design, you're going to have the wind blowing on the line or blowing on the balloon."

Balloon-based communications are often used today by the US military. A company called Space Data makes balloon-based repeater platforms for the US Air Force that "extend the range of standard-issue military two-way radios from 10 miles to over 400 miles." The balloons weigh 12 pounds or less and are designed for rapid deployment. Unlike the aerostat Crowley mentioned, this one isn't attached to the ground via a cable.

"Space Data’s military FM repeater technology is based on the simple concept of lifting wireless transceivers into the stratosphere (between 65,000 and 100,000 ft) using weather balloons technology," the company says. With transmit power of up to three watts and using frequencies of 225-375MHz, the technology can provide voice and data service to an area with a diameter of 400 miles. The balloon is controlled from a portable ground station. It can be tracked via GPS and has vent and ballast systems to control its altitude.

Balloon-based communications similarly are provided to the US Army for "encrypted communications for troops in the field." Beyond the military, a company called Oceus Networks was working with the Federal Communications Commission last year to demonstrate feasibility of high altitude balloons at "near-space altitude" to carry LTE signals to public safety responders in disaster areas. Oceus Network is also working with the Army to test LTE communications from tethered balloons much closer to Earth, just 650 meters from the ground.

From high altitudes, serving users from tens of miles away

For Google, Crowley thinks the most likely scenario is a cellular deployment using standard cellular frequencies and 3GPP2 specifications (rather than 4G) to take advantage of economies of scale from the wide deployment of older, cheaper handsets. "It depends on what the model is for handsets and devices, and getting these out to people," he said. "As LTE grows the device cost goes down and it becomes more practical to deploy."

With balloons rather than cellular towers, Crowley believes it would be more like a TV model where the transmitter can serve users 30 to 50 miles way. "From a high balloon, you're going to reach a little further beyond the Earth's curvature," he said.

The problem here would be more on the upload side rather than the download side. "You can receive a signal OK from that," he said. "The limit would be the uplink going back, how much power do you have from a small device going back and can you reach that? It's way up in the air. That helps. You get gain when you raise the height of the base station antenna, that makes it easier for the handset to reach."

Such a scenario would likely focus on delivering the most essential services, such as text messages, e-mail, and voice. "Even voice can be compressed to a very low level," Crowley said. "I don't think they're envisioning streaming Netflix or movies."

If balloons were used to distribute wireless signals, it would probably work best as a complement to other technologies, which is what it sounds like Google is envisioning with satellite and White Spaces networks. Google could provide both cellular connectivity and Wi-Fi-like systems. Wireless expert Peter Rysavy of Rysavy Research noted that he "can't comment on the feasibility of balloons," but told Ars that from an architecture standpoint "it makes sense for some scenarios to have base stations that have larger coverage areas than terrestrial systems, but smaller than satellite systems."

"The benefit I see is providing data service over a large coverage area, greater than you could with a White Space network," Rysavy continued. "The downside is that with such a large coverage area, you can’t offer that much bandwidth to each subscriber. For that reason, I don’t see it as that useful in the US except for rural areas."

Back in 1996, Wired wrote about how Sky Station International was planning to connect 80 percent of the world's population by 2004 from balloons 15 miles above the ground. Obviously, it didn't happen.

Crowley notes that while commercial wireless networks involving balloons have been considered in the US, when bean counters analyze the numbers the proposals tend to die. Even though you might need just one balloon where previously 10 cell towers were required, Crowley said companies doing the financial analyses have "reached the conclusion that for the US market at least, it's not practical."

Google may have motivations beyond finances, though. The company certainly does lots of charitable work. It has been working on improving connectivity in the US with Google Fiber and bringing the Internet to underserved populations overseas through White Spaces networks. So balloon-based networks might be an extension of Google's longstanding goal of bringing the Internet to as many people as possible, and it might help boost Android usage to boot.

As Crowley said, "maybe Google has another model for supporting this."

Yes, but not cost prohibitive enough yet. I don't see why they can't use hydrogen either, as the baloon is relatively small and does not carry passengers hence risk is minimal. We really need to find a way to mass produce of graphene sheets, the best known material for trapping helium gas.

At high altitudes wind is very steady and constant. Like a kite they can have a wing structure and keep it airborne indefinitely, but this requires attaching a cable with a winching mechanism that may pose a problem for passing aircrafts.

Yes. And in addition to a steadily rising price, supply disruptions are a problem. There was a really nasty issue about a year or so ago when planned maintenance at sites in the US overlapped with unplanned outages in Qatar leading (no kidding) to global rationing of helium. Lasted for a couple of months before the supply chain evened out. Less dramatically, sites in the developing world often have difficulty getting regular supplies.

Hydrogen would probably work OK for this use, and that's readily available as all you need to make it in the field is water and electricity.

My worry about this is security. These things would be magnets for insurgent groups looking to disrupt communications, and would be visible from huge distances. All you have to do is cut one cable, and bubye internet. You could try to protect the attachment point, but then soon small drones will be so cheap you could put an IED on a drone and cut the cable higher up. Or if you had a small rocket, take down the balloon itself (if the rocket can reach that altitude, which would be a problem at 65,000 ft).

My worry about this is security. These things would be magnets for insurgent groups looking to disrupt communications, and would be visible from huge distances. All you have to do is cut one cable, and bubye internet. You could try to protect the attachment point, but then soon small drones will be so cheap you could put an IED on a drone and cut the cable higher up. Or if you had a small rocket, take down the balloon itself (if the rocket can reach that altitude, which would be a problem at 65,000 ft).

I don't think they're all that vulnerable as they're used in military support roles. In fact, they're probably significantly less vulnerable than similar ground-based solutions.

My worry about this is security. These things would be magnets for insurgent groups looking to disrupt communications, and would be visible from huge distances. All you have to do is cut one cable, and bubye internet. You could try to protect the attachment point, but then soon small drones will be so cheap you could put an IED on a drone and cut the cable higher up. Or if you had a small rocket, take down the balloon itself (if the rocket can reach that altitude, which would be a problem at 65,000 ft).

Sure, insurgents could pop the balloon. But then, how are they gonna upload a video to youtube bragging about it? Besides, the tether point is going to have to be near a backbone, so it's probably gonna be secure anyway (put it inside a power plant, military installation, or some such -- you only need a handful to blanket an entire country).

Also on the plus side, reduces noise pollution from pesky aircraft as the cable functions like an old style barrage balloon. It's a deterrent if pilots know about it, and it teaches them a lesson if they don't. Or is that not a plus?

My worry about this is security. These things would be magnets for insurgent groups looking to disrupt communications, and would be visible from huge distances. All you have to do is cut one cable, and bubye internet. You could try to protect the attachment point, but then soon small drones will be so cheap you could put an IED on a drone and cut the cable higher up. Or if you had a small rocket, take down the balloon itself (if the rocket can reach that altitude, which would be a problem at 65,000 ft).

Sure, insurgents could pop the balloon. But then, how are they gonna upload a video to youtube bragging about it? Besides, the tether point is going to have to be near a backbone, so it's probably gonna be secure anyway (put it inside a power plant, military installation, or some such -- you only need a handful to blanket an entire country).

Better then blanketing an entire country with only a few, you can blanket portions of neighboring countries as well. Also balloons aren't always as easy to 'pop' as you might think. *source http://www.worldskycat.com/images/SkyCat.pdfedit -> typo

My worry about this is security. These things would be magnets for insurgent groups looking to disrupt communications, and would be visible from huge distances. All you have to do is cut one cable, and bubye internet. You could try to protect the attachment point, but then soon small drones will be so cheap you could put an IED on a drone and cut the cable higher up. Or if you had a small rocket, take down the balloon itself (if the rocket can reach that altitude, which would be a problem at 65,000 ft).

At least in Afghanistan, the weak link is the operators, not the infrastructure. For some mixture of PR reasons and concern about NATO collaborators using cell links to phone them in, the Taliban decided to pressure cell operators to shut down service at certain times. They don't(at least generally) physically attack the towers; but all you have to do is credibly threaten to attack somebody's towers and/or return their family members to them one finger at a time...

No form of infrastructure is immune to really competent, motivated, one-off attacks of significant magnitude(with the possible exception of some nuke-hardened cold war relics that are far too expensive to be relevant to anything); but the bigger threat, because it's constant and widely distributed, is entropy and copper thieves. If you can relatively cheaply cover broader areas, this reduces the number of sites you need to build out and guard, even if you want some redundancy.

I thought Google was supposed to be slimming itself down to focus what they are good at which is search. All this other stuff is just a distraction from that.

Google isn't good at just search, Google is good at coming up with new weird ideas that mostly fail but on average still make money. In this case the random idea actually plays into Googles main business model.Google mainly makes money from advertising, the more people that use the internet the larger the audience is, the larger the audience the more money there is in advertising.

Crowley thinks the most likely scenario is a cellular deployment using standard cellular frequencies and 3GPP specifications (rather than 4G) ... "As LTE grows the device cost goes down and it becomes more practical to deploy."

3GPP is a standards body for mobile communications (http://3gpp.org ). Their latest standard is LTE, commonly known as "4G"; they have other standards such as GSM (known as "2G") and UMTS/WCDMA (known as "3G") Hence the above statement is meaningless in suggesting that 3GPP is not 4G.

There is additional confusion because operators insisted on describing HSPA, HSDPA and HSUPA as "4G", which were all an incremental enhancement to the existing 3G standard UMTS/WCDMA; HSPA, HSDPA and HSUPA should have been more accurately described as "3.5G".

Hydrogen works just as well, and that we have that in infinite supply. From a safety standpoint, the only thing that makes an unmanned hydrogen blimp even a little problematic is that you need to not be a complete idiot while filling it. Even then, if you screw up, hydrogen explosions, while energetic, tend to go up, not out (where the humans are standing).

Crazy? Exotic? Weird? Why? Dirigibles in use today for signage and this attaches an [sophisticated] aerial to it. The articles even gives several instances of where else this tech is being used. Why the labels?

It seems from the given information as exotic as someone running FreeBSD. A sensible, tried solution that missed popularity for various historical reasons.

Crowley thinks the most likely scenario is a cellular deployment using standard cellular frequencies and 3GPP specifications (rather than 4G) ... "As LTE grows the device cost goes down and it becomes more practical to deploy."

3GPP is a standards body for mobile communications (http://3gpp.org ). Their latest standard is LTE, commonly known as "4G"; they have other standards such as GSM (known as "2G") and UMTS/WCDMA (known as "3G") Hence the above statement is meaningless in suggesting that 3GPP is not 4G.

There is additional confusion because operators insisted on describing HSPA, HSDPA and HSUPA as "4G", which were all an incremental enhancement to the existing 3G standard UMTS/WCDMA; HSPA, HSDPA and HSUPA should have been more accurately described as "3.5G".

Balloons are not a new idea for wireless base stations. The military has been experimenting with them for quite a long time. The coverage advantage afforded by line-of-sight propagation to a huge area on the ground is pretty obvious.

'White space' technology is more recent and has yet to prove anything. As of now it's just a buzzword to describe any device which might make use of the re-allocation of old TV spectrum. There's a hope that the spectrum can be allocated much more dynamically and efficiently than traditional fixed frequency allocations, but it's far from 'well established' as a technology.

Balloons are not a new idea for wireless base stations. The military has been experimenting with them for quite a long time. The coverage advantage afforded by line-of-sight propagation to a huge area on the ground is pretty obvious.

'White space' technology is more recent and has yet to prove anything. As of now it's just a buzzword to describe any device which might make use of the re-allocation of old TV spectrum. There's a hope that the spectrum can be allocated much more dynamically and efficiently than traditional fixed frequency allocations, but it's far from 'well established' as a technology.

I think what you are saying is clear in the article. Balloons are well-established technology for military applications and such, but not for commercial wireless Internet. That's why it says "well established for such purposes."

This seems awfully sporadic with the distinction between tethered and non-tethered systems. If you could have the advantages of both then it would be a competitive system. But you can't.

Problems of tethered systems:

It gets a lot heavier. The line is likely going to have to carry data and power, in addition to being host to massive tensile strength as the wind pulls the balloon. You could propose a modern kite model, like Makani Power (also Google). But there's a problem here too, the lower altitudes that tethers can reach don't have constant wind patterns. So at best we'd be left with a system subject to the weather.

Problems of non-tethered systems:

How do you keep it in one place? You can't! Maybe this is a satellite-inspired model? If we're talking about altitudes of 60,000 ft, then that's above most airlines and really does border on the edge of space. But the jet streams at that altitude would be hopeless to try and fly against by propulsion, particularly by solar powered propulsion which is the only reasonable option for the service life needed. The alternative is that you blanket the world in these balloons and they just float around. You would necessarily have disruptions due to the statistical likelihood of one being above a certain spot of ground at any given moment. You would also have to make a huge number of them. You would also have to make them self-powered, which itself would be a very limiting constraint.

Overall it sounds like the article leans toward tethered systems but it's not clear. As far as I understand, high-altitude is mutually exclusive with tethered. That's a big problem.

I think what you are saying is clear in the article. Balloons are well-established technology for military applications and such, but not for commercial wireless Internet. That's why it says "well established for such purposes."

Eh? What purpose is 'TV white spaces' well established for? As I explained above, it isn't yet well established for anything because it's still in the early design phase.

I think what you are saying is clear in the article. Balloons are well-established technology for military applications and such, but not for commercial wireless Internet. That's why it says "well established for such purposes."

Eh? What purpose is 'TV white spaces' well established for? As I explained above, it isn't yet well established for anything because it's still in the early design phase.

There are numerous White Spaces deployments overseas that bring wireless Internet to underserved areas, and a couple in the US. We've written about them.

These would be good in Canada too. Americans are most familiar with the highly populated southern areas of our country, but go north of the US border by 200 miles and wireless and cell coverage is spotty.

This could especially be useful for Indian Reserves and Inuit communities.

Google isn't good at just search, Google is good at coming up with new weird ideas that mostly fail but on average still make money. In this case the random idea actually plays into Googles main business model.Google mainly makes money from advertising, the more people that use the internet the larger the audience is, the larger the audience the more money there is in advertising.

Besides, if Google doesn't do this stuff, who else will? There is a distinct lack of long term thinking in today's corporations.

Well you can always go with hydrogen or Steam. Yes Steam, Festo aquired some patents and prototypes a few years back ( http://www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/9820.htm ) which as far as flying goes seem to work reasonable well.

Another advantage might be line of sight between the balloons. Those things arent limeted by 95% of the landscape and have very big horizon. Up there you can do nifty stuff like Highpowered directional radio without health-concerns.

Another use of this things could be a "live" google earth. Fitted with some good cameras you could do say hourly updates on the covered regions which could be a boon for science. And that for a fraction of the cost of a satellite.

Hydrogen works just as well, and that we have that in infinite supply. From a safety standpoint, the only thing that makes an unmanned hydrogen blimp even a little problematic is that you need to not be a complete idiot while filling it. Even then, if you screw up, hydrogen explosions, while energetic, tend to go up, not out (where the humans are standing).

How often such balloon needs to be refilled? Hydrogen atoms are very tiny and they always going to escape/leak.

Google isn't good at just search, Google is good at coming up with new weird ideas that mostly fail but on average still make money. In this case the random idea actually plays into Googles main business model.Google mainly makes money from advertising, the more people that use the internet the larger the audience is, the larger the audience the more money there is in advertising.

Besides, if Google doesn't do this stuff, who else will? There is a distinct lack of long term thinking in today's corporations.

As much as I like to bash Google, they do have a way of doing things to embarass other companies to get off their arses. Google fiber for instance. When has AT$T spent a damn nickel on improving infrastructure?

I hope that this article and the feedback generated helps to influence Google and encourages their continued investigations into balloons/blimps as 3G/4G/Internet "service stations". I'd also encourage them to talk to US radio amateur groups like the ARRL.

AMSAT another volunteer organization has launched dozens of satellite systems into orbit beginning in the 1970's. The very same technology would be ideal on a blimp. http://ww2.amsat.org/?page_id=468

There are hundreds of radio amateurs with BSEE and MSEE degrees capable of providing the RF and digital engineering skills necessary to design the modem hardware if commercial firms have no interest. MIT just announced a tiny cell phone transceiver that could certainly travel easily on a blimp.Check this out: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/51 ... al-africa/

These would be good in Canada too. Americans are most familiar with the highly populated southern areas of our country, but go north of the US border by 200 miles and wireless and cell coverage is spotty.

This could especially be useful for Indian Reserves and Inuit communities.

I was thinking Canada as well, in terms of fighting the trees and the terrain. It's basically impossible to run cable without clearing, and even if you clear, the terrain is so rough you don't want to be digging, and getting towers erected for cable or wireless requires equipment that's tough to get to remote wooded areas.

Balloons, on the other hand, could be deployed on a day-hike, especially at the low heights you'd need to clear the fresnel zone for even multi-km runs. Meanwhile, real infrastructure is slowly but steadily pushing outward, so you might not even have to run it for more than a few years in some cases. Very interesting.

Google isn't good at just search, Google is good at coming up with new weird ideas that mostly fail but on average still make money. In this case the random idea actually plays into Googles main business model.Google mainly makes money from advertising, the more people that use the internet the larger the audience is, the larger the audience the more money there is in advertising.

Besides, if Google doesn't do this stuff, who else will? There is a distinct lack of long term thinking in today's corporations.

As much as I like to bash Google, they do have a way of doing things to embarrass other companies to get off their arses. Google fiber for instance. When has AT$T spent a damn nickel on improving infrastructure?

BTW, the US has/had these tethered balloons at the US-Mexico border.

If Google embarrassing companies gets things done, and the Mexican drug lords embarrassing the US government gets things done, then the Canadians need to start some embarrassing on their side.

Hydrogen works just as well, and that we have that in infinite supply. From a safety standpoint, the only thing that makes an unmanned hydrogen blimp even a little problematic is that you need to not be a complete idiot while filling it. Even then, if you screw up, hydrogen explosions, while energetic, tend to go up, not out (where the humans are standing).

Or Methane. While flammable it isn't nearly as touchy as Hydrogen, and while it is only half as effective a lifting gas as Hydrogen, supply is plentiful and you don't even need much power to produce it, just modify your sewage plants, or tap it from landfill for free.

If you must use energy to create it, you can always use the Fischer-Tropsch process, which is already used on an industrial scale. Helps you get rid of pesky carbon monoxide too. Added bonus - Methane molecules are quite big and don't go through the fabric and latex envelopes used by dirigibles and balloons as easily as Hydrogen and Helium.

Just remember not to make the dirigible's envelope from highly flammable materials.

There are numerous White Spaces deployments overseas that bring wireless Internet to underserved areas, and a couple in the US. We've written about them.

They're being operated under experimental licenses with proprietary radios ... loosely following an early version of something resembling a communications standard.

The standard's body you link to above does not even appear to be working on whitespace comms.

Look, it was never a question of whether this reclaimed TV radio spectrum could be used to push some bits across the airwaves. It's actually prime spectrum for that, being above frequencies which have serious man-made noise problems (VHF) but still low enough for decent transmission range.

The broader goals of 'white-space' communications entail significant improvements in spectral efficiency, spectrum usage (avoiding cases where allocated spectrum sits idle for huge chunks of time), interference mitigation, peer-to-peer operation and device autonomy. The actual success of the technology will eventually be judged on those merits, not on press releases informing us of how revolutionary the technology is.

As far as I'm aware, the actual information contained in the current 'white space databases', which is intended to support the performance goals mentioned above, is very limited - basic data such as device location, frequency of operation, transmit power. Google would be able to provide more info on that, and also might explain whether anything unique is really going on here.

This seems like something that would also work well as way too scale networks at events. Google could fly some of these over Daytona, the Superbowl, or Olympic events and work with 4G providers events in order to improve service.

I thought Google was supposed to be slimming itself down to focus what they are good at which is search. All this other stuff is just a distraction from that.

Google isn't good at just search, Google is good at coming up with new weird ideas that mostly fail but on average still make money. In this case the random idea actually plays into Googles main business model.Google mainly makes money from advertising, the more people that use the internet the larger the audience is, the larger the audience the more money there is in advertising.

Yes, they make money off advertising, but if they owned this internet connection, wouldn't they then have detailed information for each user and what they are doing *on* the internet, not just in search or on one of their Google (and associated) attached devices?? Could it be *that* is their motivation (getting data on every internet activity for every user), and not some philanthropic venture to connect poor people in internet unattached areas in the world?? This is Google we're talking about - getting more information about what *you* are doing is something off which they can profit.

Nice idea for the hydrogen-leaking: you could generate hydrogen onboard, by using a small solar cell, sucking up water from the surounding air and using the electricty from the cell to split it.... sounds wonderfully Babel-viruslike to me :-)